Book Review: Barack, Inc. Winning Business Lessons of the Obama Campaign

I’m a fast reader, and try to read several different books every week. With non-fiction and business books, I usually just skim them to get the overall idea. Occasionally I find one I really enjoy, stop and start reading page for page.

After hearing quite a bit about it, I picked up a new copy of Barack, Inc. Winning Business Lessons of the Obama Campaign by Barry Libert and Rick Faulk. And this is one of those books that is crammed with ideas and inspiration; one that I not only stopped to read fully, but have also read a couple of times in the past week.

It’s an easy read, with only 146 pages. The authors have split the book up into four chapters:

· Success You Can Believe In and Emulate · Be Cool · Be Social · Be the Change

As you would expect from a book entitled Barack Inc, it is all about the campaign and how Barack utiltized various tools to go from a virtual unknown to the 44th President of the United States.

But what you might not expect is the pearls of wisdom on how you can change your own business for the better.

“Feedback is wherever you find it, and even when it isn’t enthusiastic, good leaders constantly seek it.”

One of the greatest things a good business owner (and a good marketer) learns is how to test. Anything is possible. And in different companies, different industries, and even with different business owners, things work differently. You never know how something will work until you try it. Plan your campaign, run it, and see how it works. If it’s profitable, keep doing it. If not, it may be in need of more tweaking and testing, or a completely different approach.

“If you have a following on one or more social networking sites, we urge you to hold on to it and expand it if you can. In today’s business world, social networkers are the coin of the realm, the means by which you can achieve growth and profitability – if only you will give the sites sufficient resources and strong leadership, inspiring the online crowd to work in your behalf.”

One of the biggest things I took away from the few months of the campaign was the power of social networking. At the time of the election, Barack had a following in the six figures on Twitter; McCain had less than 5,000. Barack had one of the top groups on Facebook. Again, McCain had a very small following. Barack used social media and he used it well. To emulate his road to success, today’s business owner also needs to take charge of the social realm, and use it to grow business as fast as possible.

“If you see a major change on the horizon, ask whether it represents a better way of doing business. And if the answer is yes, don’t just walk – run to embrace it.”

The world is filled with change. And those that choose not to embrace it will surely be left behind. Large corporations no longer are security – you have to rethink your lifestyle and how you will flow from working into retirement. The things our parents and grandparents took for granted no longer apply. With technology changing as quick as we can learn it, it’s more important than ever to use everything within reach, and share it with the world.

Barack Inc maybe short in length. But the pearls of wisdom will have you reading it again and again, looking for more ideas to help build your own business.